Time Out
by Ken-Zero
Summary: KiGo eventually, slight AU eventually. Response to KP Slash Haven challenge. Night-time visits between missions, some off-the-clock conversation, maybe even an unlikely friendship? Chapters fit between episodes. Rated T for now, may go higher later.
1. Chapter 1: Triple Ticker

Time Out

A Kim Possible Fanfic

By Ken-Zero

Disclaimer: Kim Possible, and everything related thereof, is trademarked to Disney. As such, they own everything. I'm taking another playtime in the sandbox.

Pre-note: Ideally, this will begin as a sort of series of short stories, almost vignettes, and will quite probably develop into something longer as time goes on. It is also a slight alternate universe right now, with a similarly good chance of growing into a greater one. Enjoy.

--

Chapter 1: Triple Ticker

_Kermit, eat your heart out_, thought Shego.

The reason for her smug mental tone lay in the fact that she was tucked safely away in a temporary safe-house, her one guilty pleasure—a high-powered sun lamp—beaming down from a scant few feet over her reclining self, while she lightly dozed and replayed the events of two nights ago in her mind.

The remark also stemmed from the fact that she somewhat shared the muppet frog's coloration; the harsh yellowed light of the lamp, though, rendered the greenish hue of her skin all but undetectable. Her long, black-as-night hair hung over the back of her chair, helping stretch herself out and remove the kinks and soreness brought on by heavy physical exertion from those same two nights ago. In contrariness to the oft-quoted lament of the muppet frog in question, Shego found it _quite_ easy being green right then.

She adjusted the sunglasses shading her eyes from the lamp, letting them rest more comfortably on her nose, and allowed her eyes to slide closed again. She almost hated to continue her line of thought—after all, who liked to admit to having lost a fight?—but there was just…something about her subject matter that demanded her undivided attention.

Two nights ago, Shego had barely escaped with her life as a large, castle-like building had practically exploded all around her, dragging her new employer out by the collar of his single-piece lab coat. She'd then spent the next day tracking down an errant piece of technology made missing by the same force that had taken out that first building. Getting it back had involved traveling to a seemingly mild-mannered suburb in Colorado and following the same person who'd stolen that techno-tick in the first place, first as she escaped from a local high school, and then as she drove on her friend's scooter through the city's streets until arriving at a nearby fast-food joint.

The fight that had followed…Shego felt a smile work its way onto her face. The fight that had followed had been nothing short of awesome. Sure, that red-haired girl had seemed a bit young to be their target, but given how she had deftly managed to avoid serious injury from Shego's own assaults meant that the black-haired woman had had to put in more effort into one of the few things she truly enjoyed _doing_…and not even being sat on by some eight-foot-tall high school basketball wannabe was enough to diminish that sense of excitement.

_Hell_, she thought. _Even getting arrested and breaking free didn't bother me._

She went over the first part of their fight, too, from when she and her boss, Doctor Drakken, had first captured the girl and her blond-haired partner, and had gone on to implement the next step of Drakken's hare-brained scheme…only to have—_what was her name? Oh, right—Kim Possible—_reappear, miraculously unharmed, in spite of having been dunked in a tank containing a pair of hungry sharks. Shego had to grin at how the girl had managed to annoy Drakken even while tied up and hanging over said tank, staring certain doom in the face. That took guts, and a cool head under pressure…both of which were traits for which Shego couldn't help but feel glimmers of respect.

Shego shook her head. The kid had managed to get a compact mirror, of all things, in the path of Drakken's automated laser blaster defenses, turning each shot back on itself or redirecting them into the various consoles and equipment banks. Small wonder, then, that the lair had exploded.

Shortly after escaping the custody of the police, Shego and Drakken had gone to a sort of main base, a place in which Drakken usually hatched his plans; it would usually take him about a week to set up one of his industrial-grade field lairs and fill it with the equipment he needed to carry out the idea of the week. That same main lair was where she currently was, sunning and indulging in some idle reflection while she had the chance.

A thought struck her just then, and she hauled herself up and out of the chair, flipping the switch to power off the sun lamp. She smirked a little when the lights in the rest of the lair flickered as the power usage rebalanced itself, but let it be for the moment. Instead she sauntered over to one of the myriad of computers that basically lined the base's walls, calling up one of the mapping programs her boss had taught her how to use when she first started working for him. Narrowing the search range to Colorado, she put in the last name and got exactly one result.

_Middleton…only a couple miles from that high school from yesterday._ On another hunch, she opened a search engine and put Kim's name in, if only to see what other people might have said about her.

Interestingly, the first link went to the girl's own website. Shego followed it through as much as she could stomach. _Holy crap…the girl's a freakin' saint._ There was a long—and growing, if her guess was right—list of accomplishments, but they were for the kinds of deeds Shego hadn't heard about for years: pulling cats out of trees, doing grocery runs for the elderly, babysitting… It was towards the bottom of the list that things got interesting—at least, in Shego's opinion.

Only about a dozen items from the bottom, she spotted a citation from the owner of an extensive collection of Cuddle Buddies, of all things. The line item read "Saved Mr. McHenry from accidental laser security grid activation." It was after this one that things really started to pick up for her, it seemed, culminating in "Saved the world from weirdo mad scientist Dr. Drakken's exploding ticks" at second-from-the-bottom.

Shego glanced at the last item and snorted. It read, "Rescued Mrs. Cooley's cat from the tree (time number 212)." _That settles it—she needs a reality check._

She shut off the terminal and marched off to her room. Once inside she shucked off the rather skimpy swimsuit she'd been wearing under the lamp and reached for her signature catsuit—and stopped halfway. Wearing the suit would mean she meant business…and while she was definitely going to give that Kimmie girl a good talking-to, Shego wasn't sure she wanted another fight.

She tossed the catsuit away, reaching instead into her closet for something more…casual.

--

Kimberly Ann Possible, high school freshman and newly-dubbed "world savior" by a grateful Middleton Police Department, sighed loudly as she flopped onto her bed. _Why does there have to be school tomorrow?_ she whined in her head.

She'd only gotten a couple of hours of rest two nights ago; the adrenaline rush from penetrating a mad scientist's lair, duking it out with said mad scientist's sidekick, being captured, escaping, and getting out of the lair after somehow managing to get it to blow up hadn't left her system for hours, and even after getting home at just before midnight—no need to upset her parents, after all—she hadn't been able to close her eyes for another four hours.

Then, just last night she'd fought them off _again_, this time while avoiding having a small bomb explode while it was still attached to her nose. That had been another…exciting…event.

Two days of little rest, though, had caught up with her, which was why the digital clock next to her bed read merely a quarter after nine and yet she was in her pajamas and almost ready to pass out.

She climbed under the covers and flicked off the light. As she closed her eyes, though, she couldn't help but run back over the fights with Shego, the black-haired martial artist with whom Kim had battled twice now.

She remembered the feeling of awe when first watching that security tape from Professor Acari's lab camera; Kim's second thought at the time had been, _I wonder if I move like that_. She'd spoken her first thought out loud.

When Wade had gotten more information on her, Kim had been somewhat impressed at the implied rap sheet the villainess had; eleven countries with warrants for her arrest was no mean feat, she figured. And then, when first they'd fought in the Bueno Nacho yesterday, Shego had scared the crap out of her when she'd done…_something_ with her hands, making them light up with a corona of green energy, the shade of which wasn't all that far off from her skin tone.

Kim knew she'd had more than a few close calls with those dangerous hands; she had an uneven section of hair where Shego's swipe had barely missed contact with Kim's head. Still, the fight itself had been…

_Amazing._

It was the only word that could apply in this sitch, and Kim knew it; finally she'd found someone she could fight with and not lose every time, like when she used to practice with her teachers.

She had been a little disappointed when Big Mike simply sat on Shego, but with the tick-bomb on her nose beeping away like a merry little chime of impending destruction, she wouldn't have had the time to fully enjoy it anyway.

So instead, Kim spent the next few minutes thinking over the fight again and again, and wondering if she'd end up encountering the dangerous duo any time soon.

It was to that set of thoughts that Kim fell asleep, and thus she did not hear the window to her room being forced open. The heavy wooden frame ground against its track, but the window's progress was so slow that the noise remained quiet, and Kim's sleep remained undisturbed.

A few minutes later, when the window was fully open, a person-shaped silhouette pulled itself up and through; when it stood on the floor it reached back and drew the drapes closed. A chance beam of moonlight illuminated Shego's features, but she was still facing away from Kim, so she didn't even slow down in her task.

Once she was satisfied that seeing into the room would be difficult at best, she stepped lightly over to the bed, flinching when one of the floorboards creaked; still, the noise didn't awaken her sleeping target, so she proceeded with her plan. She pulled the girl's rolling chair over, turned it backwards, and sat on it, crossing her arms over the seat back and settling her chin where her arms met.

"Twelve minutes," she muttered to herself. "That's it. It took you twelve minutes to blow up that stinkin' lair." Shaking her head, she settled in to just stare at Kim for a second.

There was no denying it; Shego, herself not even old enough to drink (not that that had stopped her the few times she had wanted to), had been handled by a little slip of a girl—and boy, was she girly, Shego noticed, when she took the time to scan around Kim's room. Everything about it seemed fairly typical for a high school freshmen.

_Gah, that's right—she's only fourteen! And if she fights like she does _now…Shego felt a shiver of anticipation, as well as the faintest stirring of dread. _God help me if she's still doing this when she's _my _age_.

Shego couldn't help but grin ruefully as she watched Kim sleep; she herself had been in this exact situation before. Once just as young, naïve, and assured of her righteousness as Kim seemed to be, Shego had learned her lessons after only a couple of years of being a costumed heroine along with her brothers.

She shook her head again. While the prospect of tangling with a Kim Possible who was a little older, a little wiser, a little wilier, and a lot more experienced was actually exciting to her, she really wanted to nip this novice heroism stuff in the bud—it would save both Kim and herself a _lot_ of grief down the road, she was sure, but probably more for her than Kim.

Having so decided, she sought out paper and pen, scribbling a brief note before placing the pen back where she'd found it. A mischievous grin appeared on her face and she laid the paper so it bridged the tip of Kim's nose and her forehead, before blowing the girl a noisy kiss and hurrying back out the window.

_That may not have been as face-to-face as I wanted…but damn, it was fun!_

--

A noise disturbed Kim's slumber, and she shifted a little, but when it failed to repeat itself she settled back down.

That is, she settled down until the incessant feeling of something tickling her nose brought her back to wakefulness. Groaning, she swiped a hand at her face to get rid of the offending sensation. She was about to roll over when the sound the object made registered to her sleepy mind, and she sat up, blinking confusedly in the dark. She found the piece of paper next to her pillow, where it had landed. She picked it up, a bit creeped out both at the fact that someone had deposited it on her face and that they had done so at after two in the morning.

She turned it over and discovered writing on one side. _Hey_, it read, _today might have been fun, and you might have ended it with a 'W', but you better quit while you're ahead…After all, one day you might lose, and then…_

The note terminated with a crudely drawn skull-and-crossbones, and in place of a signature was a heart hastily filled in with a black ball-point pen. The incongruousness of the images was unsettling…but what was even more so was that someone had managed to slip in and deposit it on her face without waking her.

She shuddered at the creepiness of the sitch…but in an effort to ward off any more night-time visitors, she slipped out of bed and shut and locked the window. Crawling back under her covers, she tried to put the note out of her mind. After all, there was still school tomorrow, and if she was less than her best Bonnie would jump on it as soon as she could.

Thoughts of the tanned girl sparked Kim' usual feelings of competition, and she spent the next half-hour dreaming up ways of one-upping Bonnie…until she fell completely asleep again.

--

A/N: Welcome, one and all, to another story. Yeah, another one I won't update but once in a blue moon. Hopefully that's not going to be the case; y'see, all these are going to be shorter chapters, almost vignettes, as I said above. Each, at least for now, will focus on the "aftermath"/"behind-the-scenes" events of an episode, and you _should_ be able to make the connection with which episode I'm talking about based on the chapter title.

Also, this is a challenge response to an older challenge on the KP Slash Haven boards. Come one, come all; it's a fun place.

Also as I said above (and I really should stop starting paragraphs with "also"), this will most probably diverge from the series into a slight AU as time goes on, so I do hope you'll bear with me on that.


	2. Chapter 2: Naco Goodness

Chapter 2: Naco Goodness

Kim Possible, lying on her bed, sighed longingly over her predicament once more.

Not three days ago she'd had to fight off the nutty blue Doctor Drakken and his attempt to burn a hole through the Earth's crust and to the mantle below, creating a magma flow that would potentially eradicate several neighboring cities. From there he would hold various parts of the world at ransom lest they suffer the same fate.

Of course, the idea was just…weird. But Kim, and her best friend Ron Stoppable, were still on the scene to deal with him. And once again Kim had had to fight off Shego…except this time, Shego had been wearing the jacket Kim had been wanting for days. And the worst part was…she seemed to _know_, somehow, that Kim wanted it.

Well, okay; maybe it had something to do with Kim shouting, "My jacket!" the first time she'd seen the other girl wearing it. Still, it seemed the thief took every chance she got to flaunt what she had while deriding Kim's own fashion and hygiene senses. Kim knew she wasn't out of the style loop…but the problem was, she didn't usually have the means to keep up with it.

Which meant those little verbal barbs had stung somewhat.

She sighed again. Ron had given her the very jacket she'd longed for after he earned something of a windfall from his short-lived work at Bueno Nacho. The fast-food place was Ron's favorite, and Kim couldn't deny having a craving every once in a while, but as for working there? While it was…regrettable that she couldn't have afforded the jacket on her own, she should never have listened to her parents and applied for a part-time job there.

First it was Ned, the assistant manager that had ridden her and Ron during the earliest parts of their shifts. The guy was a class-A jerk. And then Ron—Ron, of all people!—and Rufus, his pet naked mole rat, had completely shown her up in doing something as stupidly simple as pressing a button to dispense cheese-flavored goo.

She took a deep breath to calm herself down before working into a frustrated rage again. Getting angry with Ron and Rufus wasn't the answer, she knew. She just wasn't used to anyone _schooling_ her so easily!

Deciding she should probably sleep it off, she picked herself up off the bed, closed her window, and ambled to her closet. Opening the door, she gasped in shock.

--

Shego felt pretty good about herself right at the moment.

Oh, sure, a few days ago she'd been trapped inside a giant melting lake of cheese thanks to that Kim Possible and her friend turning Doctor D's "mag-machine" on the very building housing it. As the place melted to goo she'd heard him screaming about thinking the building was only _coated_ in cheese…and then the perky voice of the tour guide they'd bypassed hours earlier explaining that Oh, _golly_, no, the place was _all_ cheese, and that that was a common misconception, don'chaknow…

Only nearly drowning in melted cheese had saved the woman from Shego frying her and her annoying accent on the spot.

Riding in the paddy wagon afterward was bad enough; doing so while both she and Doctor D reeked of cheese was worse. So she'd knocked out the guards quickly and burned a hole through the rear door locks, getting the both of them free so she could get into the shower. In fact, the idea of a good, long, hot shower was so tempting at the time, that she almost let them take the two to the slammer _first_…except she knew they had a fallback lair close to the site of the failed Wisconsin Cheese Takeover scheme, which meant breaking out yielded a sooner shower.

The reason for her good mood, though, was a feeling of smug superiority. She'd seen how the little princess had reacted to her sarcastic zingers about wardrobe choice and skin care, and had taken particular delight in taunting her with the jacket Shego had nicked from a Club Banana store near the cheese building.

And then there was the look Kim had had when Shego first dropped that nickname on her. That had almost ruined her fighting composure, right there.

She leaned back in the seat she occupied in Drakken's planning lair, allowing her mind to travel back over the brief wrestling match their fight had become.

[—

"_The buffoon is nothing," hollered Drakken. "Find Kim Possible!"_

_Shego did as told, hunting for the red-haired girl she'd last seen duck behind one of the souvenir cases. She kept her eyes moving, looking for any trace of that easy-to-recognize hair._

_The two nearly bumped into each other a few seconds later, having come around the same corner, from opposing directions, at the same time. Kim recovered first, backflipping away with the practiced ease of a professional gymnast. Shego gave chase after a second, and the two began to fight._

_The girl once again proved frustratingly hard to hit, and Shego felt herself getting angry…until Kim committed a rookie mistake, leaving her legs open for the barest handful of seconds. _

_Shego took the shot, sweeping her legs out and backing away. As soon as Kim tried to right herself Shego pounced, pinning her to the ground. _

"_Lesson time, Princess," she said, smirking. The smirk widened to a grin when Kim's eyes widened in surprise._

"…_With that trendy coat weighing you down?" Kim responded, eyes narrowing in challenge, the barest of tiny smiles twitching the corners of her mouth up._

_With that, Kim rolled them both over, fighting for control with Shego, until she managed to get her legs curled up under Shego and kicked her away._

—]

The battle had been fun, though marred by defeat and cheese. With as acrobatic as Kimmie was, it was like trying to chase down a wet bar of soap that could fight back. It wasn't often that Shego got that sort of workout, in spite of how it had ended.

Still…she was more than a little annoyed about Kim having shown up anyway, apparently ignoring the note she'd left the last time. Then again, she considered, it wasn't like she had signed it…so probably Princess had simply ignored it.

_Guess I'll try again, this time so she knows who it's from._

--

Kim's eyes nearly popped out of her head—or at least, it felt like they should have—as she stared at the scene in her walk-in closet.

The clothing was different—a simple short-sleeved top and black jeans—but the coloring…the hair…and the skin were unmistakable.

Automatic responses overrode her shock, and Kim blinked. _Shego_ was standing in her closet. Hanging something up, it appeared, but still! She shouldn't be here!

"You shouldn't be here!"

Shego paused in the act, caught red-hangared. "Um. Doy?" she smirked.

"But…" The sitch was so bizarre she wasn't even reacting the right way. She'd met the older girl all of twice, but since they'd been opponents she _should_ be trying to kick her out ten seconds ago!

And yet Kim just…stood there. Something about just how _brazen_ Shego was acting was throwing off her reflexes.

Shego, for her part, raised her eyebrows. "But…?" she prompted, drawing the word out.

"But you shouldn't be here," the freshman repeated lamely. "This is my house!"

"I repeat: Doy." Calmly Shego finished whatever she was doing before stepping out of the closet, past a still-gawking Kim.

With effort, the amateur crime-fighter broke herself out of her shock. "Look. Why are you even here? Give me one good reason I shouldn't call my parents."

"I just wanted to see how the other half lives," Shego replied, "and knocking on doors just isn't my style." She shrugged. "As for your parents? If you were going to call them, I figure you'd have done it already."

Kim blinked. It wasn't the greatest logic, but she had a point. "Um…why do you want to see how the other half lives?"

"What, you've never scoped out the Bad Guys in their element before?"

"I've never _had_ a bad guy before."

"Ooh, so does that mean I'm your first?"

"Wouldn't you be the second?" she asked, confused. "After all, there's that doctor guy you work for…"

The oddness of having a normal conversation with even her second bad guy didn't register at all to Kim.

"Drakken? Well, I suppose." Shego was a bit miffed that Kim hadn't gotten her mild innuendo.

"Yeah, him. What's up with him being blue, anyway?"

"Don't know, don't care," Shego replied. "I get paid, I do my thing, and that's that. Why, what about you? What's up with you and your website, anyway?"

Not liking the snide tone, or how Shego had repeated her question, Kim's eyes narrowed. "I help people. It's what I do."

"Yeah, well, you better stop 'doing' before they start 'expecting.'" There was extra bitterness in her voice now, but Kim didn't catch it.

"What do you mean?"

"Keep it up and you'll find out. And then I can say I told you so. Best to quit while you're ahead…and unhurt." With that she took two steps and vaulted over the windowsill, disappearing into the night once she cleared the light spilling out of Kim's open window.

Kim watched it happen, a tad bewildered. That had been…one of the stranger nights she'd had in a while. No, scratch that; it _was_ the weirdest night ever.

Shego's last warning echoed around in her head for a few seconds before reminding her of something. She dug out the note she'd found a few nights ago lying on her face. Rereading it, she noted it did sound very similar to that warning.

It was a bit…disconcerting, to say the least. Either she had two people warning her out of her hobby, or Shego was trying extra hard to get her to quit. Why? Just so that she'd have an easier time of it on _her_ side?

A death trap and two major fights in less than a week couldn't throw her…but this was somehow more personal. And it served to make Kim just a bit angry. She knew there were going to be threats to her physical wellbeing, but her father hadn't drilled his family motto into her head from a young age for nothing.

Anything, after all, was possible for a Possible.

Anything.

Including showing Shego who'd get to say "I told you so."

--

A/N: Note, Kim's not really all that mature, still. She _is_, of course, only 14. And armed with all the invincibility of being a teenager, and her track record so far…well, let's just say I'm pretty convinced she wouldn't heed instructions (from her enemies, no less) to back off.


	3. Chapter 3: Mentertainment

Time Out

A Kim Possible fanfic

By Ken-Zero

Disclaimer: As usual, KP and the rest belong to Disney; they were created there and will fade into obscurity there at some point in the (hopefully very) distant future.

* * *

Chapter 3: Ment-ertainment

Kim Possible, for perhaps the first time in her life, felt scared.

Not nervous—that kind of fluttery feeling was usually reserved in case she had her sights on a cute boy in class. Heck, she didn't even get nervous before going to a cheerleading performance.

She was actually _scared_—frightened for her very existence. It wasn't a feeling she was at all familiar with, and she hated it a lot. She didn't even have any reason to be scared—not now! Here she was, lying in bed, sheet and comforter pulled up to her chin, faithful Pandaroo clutched tightly in her hands atop her chest, all the familiar sounds of the house and neighborhood at night trying to lull her into actually falling asleep. But she couldn't.

_And why should I be able to,_ her mind contended. After all, last night, she'd been tied to a very sturdy steel load-bearing pillar in a time-share villain's lair with the whole place's self-destruct device smoothly ticking away the mere minute and a half she had left to live, with Ron roped to the same pillar right behind her, both bound by more than enough rope to restrict Rufus from even attempting to leave Ron's pocket and chew through the knot.

_Thank God for Corporal Dobbs_, she thought fervently, finding her eyes growing hot with gathering tears.

The corporal, back in his own body, had managed to free them while the lair shook with the beginnings of the destruct program. They had just barely managed to race outside, taking shelter behind the smallest of berms in the grassy lot outside the lair, before the place actually blew itself to bits.

Doctor Drakken's casual disregard not only for her own life but for the very piece of stolen military technology he'd intended to use in the first place was another reason she was scared. She'd been somewhat banking on the fact that he really wanted his new toy while she and Ron (still in each other's bodies) had showed up with the corporal; in her mind, that was something of an insurance policy against any extreme action he might take.

Unfortunately, she'd been wrong. He'd declared, with a fairly childlike sulk, that if he couldn't have the Neutronalizer, then no one could…and with the two teens tied to the pillar, he'd had Shego start the self-destruct while they waltzed on out.

It was a defeat for Team Possible, that was for sure…even though the hardware had survived, and so had they, the criminals were still free. _Probably planning something else right now_, she thought.

She kept thinking back to just how…_cheerfully_ Shego had pressed the big red self destruct button. That was the worrisome part. Kim didn't think of herself as worth executing in that spectacular a fashion…but apparently the bad guys begged to differ. The fear for her own mortality warred with the sense that she was doing the right thing; the terms were fairly stark, though, and that was not something that had _ever_ occurred to her—not even the more extreme mundane jobs her website provided her with carried quite the looming thread of imminent destruction that yesterday had brought.

She pretended to carry through alright, putting on the confident face that seemed needed at the time. Or perhaps it was shock, and she truly _had _been confident until reality set in later. She wasn't sure.

A part of Kim's mind was actually amused it took until now for this to happen; after all, she'd been through a death trap or two and two major fights with Shego, not to mention dealing with Ron giving that old guy—Señor Senior, Senior, she remembered—pointers on how to be a good bad guy, and a couple other nutcases throwing their hats into the villain ring. It had been a busy few weeks since school began, that was for sure.

Still, though, for this being the third encounter with Drakken and his group, Kim was impressed—_Is that a bad thing?—_with how…well, almost tailor-made Drakken's schemes were for her. Throwing down with Shego while Ron tried to slip by had been exhilarating both times previous, and this time was no exception.

Even while she'd been stuck in Ron's body.

Some of the fearfulness left her as she smiled a bit at how the last two days had gone. After inadvertently having their heads switched, Kim had spent a day as Ron—as she put it later, "wallowing in the low expectations." Guilty as she felt about it, which was more than a little but less than a lot, it had been…_relaxing_ not having to deal with the massive amount of pressure Kim had built upon herself. It was only when she _didn't_ have to do…well, everything, really…that she realized just how much she actually involved herself in.

Still, though, being that lazy all the time was definitely not the way she wanted to live. Part of the reason she threw herself into everything was that she enjoyed it—a lot. Always keeping busy meant she felt useful and productive, and it also helped burn off some of the hyper energy she always had.

Amusingly, it seemed that energy followed her mind; while she'd occupied Ron's body, she found herself quite capable of continuing her usual athletic feats in spite of his being in only average shape.

She couldn't help but smirk mentally when she recalled duking it out with Shego atop the giant machinery in the temp lair, while Kim had been in Ron's body. Apparently Shego was only satisfied with chasing her around, no matter which "her" it was. Or maybe she could recognize the threat Kim was to Drakken's operations, no matter which "her" it was.

Whichever direction it took, it had been quite the fight until they were overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. Drakken's henchmen were disturbingly well-equipped, and they seemed to take a great, dark delight in blasting their energy rods at Kim and Ron. It didn't matter if they never hit, they just had evil fun trying to do so.

She rolled that over in her head a few times—"evil fun." Somehow it described what was going on perfectly. Death traps aside.

Actually…now that she thought about it, that _did_ mark at least two instances of certain doom that she'd successfully managed _not_ to suffer. And for this last one, Drakken hadn't even been inside the area, much less setting it off himself. So maybe…just maybe, he _didn't_ expect them to do her in, all his over-the-top rhetoric aside. Maybe he just meant to slow her down enough so he could get away.

Then again, slowing anyone down—even a butt-kicking, world-saving cheerleader—was easy enough to do _without _tying that person down and setting a building to blow up around them.

Finally allowing her tiredness to win, Kim made a mental note to ask Drakken—_maybe "taunt" is a better word—_about his lousy deathtraps the next time she saw him.

* * *

If looks could kill, Shego's stare would have vaporized six layers of standard Hench-Co Reinforced Lair Dividers by now, and that material was rated against tank shells.

That _idiot_ little cheerleader had gone and completely disregarded the warnings that Shego had left her, and had come to foul up her and Drakken's latest attempt at world domination via the Neutronalizer. She still had no idea what the thing did, but it was a moot point anyway.

_Drakken probably wanted it because it _looked_ like a death ray, but it probably spawned puppies and kittens and rainbows,_ she thought darkly. It would, after all, be just their luck.

She couldn't deny that it had been great fun tangling with the Princess, even switched as she was into her buffoonish sidekick's body—a condition Shego planned on never letting her live down. She had, though, been more than a little disappointed when the two had shown up that first time to try and keep her and Drakken from making off with the Neutronalizer.

Shego had no illusions that she had anything left of a conscience; abandoning that nagging little voice had been something of a prerequisite when she'd taken up her villainous career. Still and all, actually killing someone didn't really sit well with her; she knew society tended to frown on people who killed other people and didn't have whatever flimsy justification, like the police or the military, and so it was a lot easier for her to get away with metaphorical murder in her thefts when there was no associated trail of bodies. Plus, killing someone meant you got caught in what you were doing, and the professional pride she was still building in her skills meant she was more willing to abandon what she'd come for than try to extract whatever item from a gang of meat shields.

Which meant that it irked her somewhat that Drakken had ordered her to engage the self-destruct system. So she had carefully ignored the rodent in Kim's sidekick's pocket that was trying its damnedest to burrow into the fabric to hide from her, figuring that, if Kim was going to continue trying to play hero, then she'd better learn fast how to be resourceful.

That Shego hadn't seen or heard anything in the twenty-four hours or so since that failed plan regarding the authorities finding some charred bodies in the place's wreckage meant that the teen had managed to get out; seeing the dopey face of the guy whose body Drakken had "stolen" for a few days appear on the news cast gave her an idea of just how Kim had escaped.

Shego felt a little guilty in the relief she felt over that fact, though it was somewhat understandable; the girl was fun to fight, and just as much fun to tease. She thought back to the day Kim had caught her in the girl's closet. That had been just priceless, and she felt herself crack a little grin. Dropping the innuendo-laden statements had been fun, even if she didn't get the reaction she was looking for…right away, that is. She was sure the teen wasn't sheltered enough to get it eventually.

Which meant that, barring actually doing something to prevent Kim from being called on to foil their next plan—

_Say…there's an idea_.

While their first meeting had proven that Kim was willing and somehow able to drop everything to go save the world, or whatever it was she claimed she did, Shego figured there had to be _some_ things that even the All-American Princess wouldn't dare interrupt, no matter the nature of said interruption.

Which meant she had some more research to do…which in turn meant more teasing Kim about seeing how the "other half lived." The only bad thing, she figured, was that she had no idea how much time it would take for Dr. Drakken to come up with another one of his mad schemes. She had to give it to him—in private, though, not to his face—his genius was certainly "mad" enough that absolutely no one would be able to predict what kind of crazy science he'd come up with next.

Shego felt some of her earlier anger evaporate as she started indulging her imagination, planning on how she was going to freak out the cheerleader this time.

* * *

Note: As I am going in production order, not on-air order, the chapters will not necessarily jive with watching the series start-to-end. This is based on "Mind Games," in case the title didn't give it away.


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